In the essay “Forget Shorter showers” by Derrick …show more content…
He tries to create awareness on how much waste we, as American individuals generate, and the need for this to change. In one of his many interesting yet disturbing examples, he is puzzled on how we toss 80 million plastic bottles every day “when almost everyone has access to clean drinking water” (Mckibens). Or how we toss enough aluminum to rebuild our entire air fleet every three months. But McKibbens doesn’t stop here, he also argues that this waste also comes in the form of money and time by stating that Harvard graduates that pursue careers in finance and consulting are wasting valuable time and money that could be spent on more productive careers. As part of a solution, McKibbens argues that to get out of the perhaps irreparable situation that we are in, we ought to relearn old habits of reusing and recycling things we no longer need. In the end he calls for a much needed change largely by part of each individuals and gives examples of post waste living like, freecycling, craigslisting and